him--saving _he_ does not want--but is unable to reach him even
with one message of regret for past forgetfulness.

"No; there is something more in all this than mistake of
Executive, or strife of party, or error of Cabinet, or fault of
men can explain. The purpose of this life that has been, the
lesson of this death that must be, is vaster and deeper than these
things. The decrees of God are as fixed to-day as they were two
thousand years ago, but they can be worked to their conclusion by
the weakness of men as well as by the strength of angels.

"There is a grey frontlet of rock far away in Strathspey--once the
Gordons' home--whose name in bygone times gave a rallying-call to
a kindred clan. The scattered firs and wind-swept heather on the
lone summit of Craig Ellachie once whispered in Highland
clansmen's ear the warcry, 'Stand fast! Craig Ellachie.' Many a
year has gone by since kith of Charles Gordon last heard from
Highland hilltop the signal of battle, but never in Celtic hero's
long record of honour has such answer been sent back to Highland
or to Lowland as when this great heart stopped its beating, and
lay 'steadfast unto death' in the dawn at Khartoum. The winds that
moan through the pine trees on Craig Ellachie have far-off
meanings in their voices. Perhaps on that dark January night there
came a breath from heaven to whisper to the old Highland rock, 'He
stood fast! Craig Ellachie.'

"The dust of Gordon is not laid in English earth, nor does even
the ocean, which has been named Britannia's realm, hold in 'its
vast and wandering grave' the bones of her latest hero. Somewhere,
far out in the immense desert whose sands so often gave him rest
in life, or by the shores of that river which was the scene of so
much of his labour, his ashes now add their wind-swept atoms to
the mighty waste of the Soudan. But if England, still true to the
long line of her martyrs to duty, keep his memory precious in her
heart--making of him no false idol or brazen image of glory, but
holding him as he was, the mirror and measure of true
knighthood--then better than in effigy or epitaph will his life be
written, and his nameless tomb become a citadel to his nation."

The statue of Gordon stands in noble reverie in Trafalgar Square, at the
centre of the Empire for whose honour he died.

In St. P